


sung out of tune in solitude

by decadencethief



Category: Homestuck, Vast Error
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-30 00:41:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19031251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decadencethief/pseuds/decadencethief
Summary: You look in the mirror and see a failure. [Vast Error spoilers up to p. 917]





	sung out of tune in solitude

You look in the mirror and see a failure.

You see cheeks that are too round, a chin that’s too small, a body that’s too thin, too short, too stiff. You see chewed nails on digits that are all too fast to start trembling. Your reflection’s eyes are wide; there are still no dark circles underneath them. The smile on his lips makes the muscles around your mouth twitch, like your nerves have been reminded of the absence of a phantom limb. Did your clothes always use to hang off your body as if it were a wire coat hanger?

You look in the mirror and see a boy surrounded by his friends. He still has them - he thinks. He’s grown up in opulence and isolation, surrounded by the remnants of a transgression that wasn’t his to commit, but his to suffer for. He does a lot of thinking; his ideas slowly begin to crystallise. He gets lost in his head, sometimes, but he has people to pull him out of it. He isn’t happy - how can he be, living in this crumbling facsimile of a world? - but he’s hopeful. He has grand aspirations.

You aren’t certain what the first thing was to fall apart. You only see the signs in retrospect, foreshadowing the inevitable fallout long in advance. The subtle mockery, the arguments, the way your words would make them scoff and roll their eyes. You wish you had realised it at the time. You wish you had seen the rift that was forming around you. Perhaps you would have managed a clean break, with some preparation. 

Perhaps it would have hurt less.

Your reflection is staring back at you. You look even more haggard now, more tired. You can’t say you have been eating or sleeping enough, and it shows. You have more important things to be doing with your time.

You resent that the voice that chides you for the disregard for your health is still  _ his. _ As if he has any right to talk. His fixation on his work even while the world was unravelling around him nearly cost him his life, and it’s only pragmaticism that induced you to secure his entry into the game. You wonder what he’s going to feel when he learns that his matesprit allied herself with you. You wonder if he’s going to throw accusations at you. Part of you hopes that he does - then you might ask him why he wasn’t there when it happened, why he trusts her decisions so little. It’s a conversation you’d love to have. 

Your reflection stares at you through narrowed eyes. You haven’t noticed when your grip on your halberd has tightened, but your knuckles are white with the tension. Your hands are shaking. You’re angry, you realise. Furious. It swirls and twists inside you like red-hot tendrils, and without anyone to help you untangle them, they take over. 

You swing your halberd. There’s a howl, like a wounded animal’s, and you’re only distantly aware that it’s your mouth that the sound tears from. The halbert connects with the mirror with a metallic peal, so loud that it drowns out everything else. The mirror shatters outward from the point of collision, but somehow stays within its frame. The jagged cracks in the glass swallow your image. 

Distantly, you’re aware of the energy that seeps out between the broken shards. Your portal opens.

You lower your weapon. Your heart is racing, but the knot of tendrils in the pit of your stomach has loosened enough to let you breathe again. The ringing in your ears slowly dies down. You turn away, towards the portal that awaits you. Your legs start to move of their own volition.

Before you cross over, you pause.

You look in the mirror. A thousand angry eyes stare back at you.

 


End file.
